Soyuz TMA-13M spaceship crew opens hatches to ISS

BAIKONUR, May 29 — The crew of the Soyuz TMA-13M spaceship has opened hatches about two hours after docking with the International Space Station (ISS).

The hatches were opened at 7:52 a.m. Moscow time (4:52 GMT) on Thursday. The Soyuz crew has passed to the ISS, the Moscow regional Mission Control Centre told ITAR-TASS.

The crew of the 40/41st ISS expedition consisting of Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev, NASA astronaut Gregory Wiseman and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst arrived at the ISS on board the spaceship Soyuz TMA-13M. Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev and US astronaut Steve Swanson met them aboard the ISS. Thus, six spacemen will be staying aboard the ISS as well as two docked Soyuz spaceships.

This is the first space flight in their space career for Wiseman and Gerst who had just arrived at the ISS, Surayev has already made one flight to the orbital station in 2009.

The new ISS crew will work on the orbit for around 167 days.

Surayev, Wiseman and Gerst are to fulfill a broad program of scientific applied research and experiments, make onboard video recording and photographing, make operations with space freighters Progress and US space freighter Dragon and resolve many other tasks.

Spacemen are to make three spacewalks. Skvortsov and Artemyev will make two of them, Surayev and Alexander Samokutyaev who will come to the ISS already as a crewman of the next ISS expedition will make the third spacewalk to resolve many other tasks. (PNA/Itar-Tass)